


Tribal, Intimate Revenge

by finch (afinch)



Series: Triumvirate [3]
Category: Whatever You Want - Vienna Teng (Song)
Genre: Don't Have to Know Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-24
Updated: 2014-12-24
Packaged: 2018-03-01 04:01:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2758844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afinch/pseuds/finch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I did it. I burned it all. I did it and I'm not even sorry. </p><p>I did it, and this is my story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tribal, Intimate Revenge

**Author's Note:**

  * For [starseverywhere](https://archiveofourown.org/users/starseverywhere/gifts).



> Title is from Seamus Heaney's poem, "Punishment".

I did it. I burned it all. I did it and I'm not even sorry. 

I did it, and this is my story.

*

The first time he smiled at me, I smiled back. I was the helper, the one to do his bidding. And he needed help. They all did, one by one as they came and filtered in and out of my life. He had a smile underlayed with sinisterness, and I found that I appreciated that. He looked down on me, and that was okay. He expected me to obey his every command, and I found sheer pleasure in finding ways to subvert him. Had I known that's what he liked, I don't know if I'd have continued.

Probably.

The first time, he called me into his office and, in no uncertain terms, demanded a blow job. I pushed against the door until the latch echoed through the entire room. He was grinning, expectant, the sinister now burning in his eyes.

So I did. I suppose that means everything that happened after is my fault. 

It's hard not to like it when someone lavishes with you with attention and material things, and the only thing you have to do for them is give him a blow job whenever he asks. Or let him fuck you before he shows you off in the richest of locations. I was arm candy for his ego, and it would have been so easy if it was all free.

Nothing is ever free. Every time the door latched, he'd push at me for my secrets, pull them out with tenderness I had no idea he could possess. He was never forceful, he was never mean. He'd demand, and I'd subvert, and the intoxication would overwhelm us both. Nothing was ever fancy enough; his office was a poor substitute for a bed. I developed standards, and held him to them.

I might have been the only person who ever had. 

I should back up, look at me, jumping right into the sex (admit it, the sex is the only good part of this entire story). I inherited him, when he was promoted. He didn't inherit me. I knew the secrets of the place, where everything was filed, how to use the computers, how to answer the phone, where to go for the best lunch (and later, the best "lunch"). 

He was a floundering company man, lost in the sea of a higher paycheck and increased irresponsibility. I guided him, shaped him, molded him. In turn, he lavished kisses on me while stroking my breasts. 

He told me I was beautiful. 

I never messed up, and I covered his mistakes carefully; I made him a king, and in turn, became his concubine, the jezebel. When the door latched shut, I belonged to him, finally.

It sounds vicicious, doesn't it? It was. I soaked up every bit of him I could. I used his desire for my secrets to keep him; I never made it easy. All this time, his whole life, anything that he wanted, no one would dare to question him, no one would dare to stand up. 

Not even me, not really. I was a conquest, but never a captive. I was a prize, but never a princess. I was loyal to his reputation, I was loyal to the art of being kind to his wife, I was loyal to sex, and all the ways he wanted to have it. 

That is, until I found out how much he "loved" her. He himself let that one slip. He liked taking me places, using me, because it made his wife miss him, and when his wife missed him, it was the best sex he'd ever had. I suppose I should have seen it coming, seen how much of a tool I was, a means to an end.

That's how he looked at everyone who had the misfortune of working for him. I couldn't just dump him. I worked for him. We all know what happens to the careers of women who have the audacity to say they have a sexuality. Everyone knows they'd have rapped his knuckles and sent him on his merry way, another promotion. 

Maybe that's how he got his last one.

Fortune - or fate - shined with his wife. She could have destroyed us both, but she didn't. She only wanted to destroy him, and I was okay with that. I would help. It was a flash drive that couldn't have come from her - not unless she'd had help - and once I looked at it, everything shattered. 

I knew he had been hiding me. I didn't realize by how much. It was all laid bare on that drive, the way in which he'd taken the company and used them as a piggy bank.

I had a choice, I could have saved him. I chose not to cast the stones of silence and instead gave the flash drive to the media. That's where, if it hadn't been before, it was truly my fault. 

No, if everyone was going to know we diddled behind latched doors, he wasn't going to be able to run from it. He was going to have to publicly answer for every moment of it. I was going to have to answer for every secret that he'd pried out of me.

I didn't think for a second that he'd do anything other than throw me under the bus; knowing that, it became easy to decide to do it to him. He hadn't made me do anything; he had asked and I had acquiesced. 

The rest happened quickly. They sent the police over the following morning. The media waved cameras in my face, wanted to know what I knew. They did the same to him; but she couldn't be found. They asked him impossible questions, and he gave them no answers. The more he stayed silent, the more protection he'd have. 

I resigned from the company so I wouldn't be beholden to their gag order; I left their protection to seek my own. I smiled at the TV - I was smiling at him - and told them I had done whatever he wanted. It was true, I had, and the truth of just how I had would come later, the tiny details the public would only care about after they'd traded their stock in the company. 

There are people who think I'm a terrible person for daring to control the story on my own terms - for daring to tell my story and to not let anyone else have a piece of it. They are why I am not sorry for making this whole affair a public stain. They are why I do not - why I cannot - go quietly. 

I haven't ruined my life. 

Tell the truth and let all else follow. This is the fire I have cast, that he has brewed, and she has kindled. This is his truth, my truth, and even her truth. This is our story, for better or for worse. 

This is our story, whatever you say.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much to Kristin for betaing! Thanks to Sarah for the much-needed hand-holding!


End file.
